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Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Kata has been on a roll lately with their new products like
the Katabox and T4 tablet. The i4 is an oldie but goodie having been announced
at the beginning of this year and you can get it for a lot cheaper now. Let’s
review the i4 and see if it still has the goods.

Specs:

- 5″ HD IPS display (720 x 1280 resolution, 294ppi)

- 1.7GHz MediaTek MT6592 octa-core processor

- 2GB RAM

- Mali 450 GPU

- 32GB internal storage

- 16mp rear-facing autofocus camera

- 8mp front camera

- 3.75G/HSPA+

- WiFi b/g/n

- Bluetooth 4.0

- GPS with A-GPS

- Yamaha loudspeakers

- 2,300mAh battery

- Android 4.4 KitKat

Price Php 7,499.00 from Lazada.com

Design:

The last Kata phone I reviewed was the i3 and I remember
being impressed with it. The i4 is no different. In fact, it really has a premium look. Its
body is metal with only the back being made of plastic. It is quite heavy for a
phone but the tradeoff is that it feels very solid in the hand. Unfortunately,
with the nice design comes some compromises. There is no expandable Micro SD
storage, no removable battery and it only has a single SIM slot with an iPhone
like micro SIM tray. To make up for that, Kata included a generous 32GB onboard
memory and OTG support. The screen,
while not full HD is still impressive with very good viewing angles.

Performance:

I’m really glad Kata decided to put an Octa-core chip and
paired it with 2GB of RAM. The performance of this device is very fast.
Navigating is very fluid and handles multi-tasking between apps very well.
Needless to say game performance is also very good. I’ll post some benchmarks
and screen shots for you to see. The battery performance was a lot better than
I expected. I was able to get through a whole day with about 3 hours on 3G and
the rest on WiFi with still plenty power to spare. Naturally, your mileage may
vary if you play lots of games and keep 3G on. As for the camera, it’s quite good
although basing on the specs, I was hoping for better quality and I found the
autofocus to be a bit slow. Still, the average person will be happy with it.
The software is still on Kitkat with not much alteration from stock Android and
just your usual Kata pre-installed apps. As a bonus, the speakers are loud and
clear with not much distortion even at high volume.

Verdict:

When this phone was launched it was almost 10T pesos. But
now at 7,499 it is still quite a good buy. Do I wish it had a micro SD slot?
Yes. But the 32GB should be more than enough for the average person. Do I wish
it had LTE? Yes, but to be honest, HSPA+ is still pretty fast and I had no
problems doing my work on this phone. Perhaps the next model will have LTE. The
draw of this phone is its look and build quality. You won’t be ashamed to show
this off and no one will think you have a budget phone.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

The Kata T4 has been finally launched locally and it seems
that Kata has decided to make its pricing very aggressive which is very good
for us consumers. Like I mentioned in my unboxing and initial review, I was
quite impressed with this mini tablet. My only real concern was the price and
it I believe that Kata has done their pricing homework. Let’s list down the
specs again and see if my final review keeps up to my initial impression.

There is really no getting away from it but the design is
almost identical to that mini fruity tablet from Cupertino. At least we can all
agree that design-wise, it looks pretty nice. In fact, they are so similar that
almost any case designed for that mini tablet will fit the T4. With only access
to the SIM and Micro SD cards being covered, but since you hardly use those slots,
it’s really not a big deal. The build quality is pretty good considering the plastic
metallic like body, but at this price you can’t really complain. Check out the
photos below for more details on the case and Sim card access slots.

Dual SIM slots and Micro SD

Kata T4 vs iPad Mini

Kata T4 using iPad Mini case

Back of T4 using iPad mini case

Performance

First of all, let’s get realistic for a moment. If you read
the specs you will know that is a budget tablet. However, with that said, it
does admirably well as an everyday dual-purpose device. The screen is not Full HD
but thankfully to make up for that, Kata put a nice and bright IPS screen with
good viewing angles. It may also not have the fastest processor but navigating
around the device is very fluid and most games I played with worked just fine.
Even more demanding games like Dead Trigger, Experiment Z, Zombie Highway
(notice the Zombie theme) and Plane Simulator were all very playable. You might
have to wait a bit for the games to load but overall, not bad. I’ll post some
screen shots of game play and benchmarks below. The T4 is still running Android
Kitkat 4.4.2 and while I would have liked to have seen a new version of
Android, the OS is pretty stable and with only the app drawer being modified to
give you an iOS type of app layout. The camera is pretty average for a tablet.
It won’t blow your socks off but it’s not that terrible and as long as you take
photos in good lighting conditions, it’s good enough for posting on your
favorite social media account. Again, I will post some sample photos below so
that you can judge for yourself. The real icing on the cake here is the Dual
SIM phone functionality of this tablet. It may seem awkward using it as a phone
but in reality you get used to it and it really saves you from buying and
carrying two devices. While it may not have LTE, it has 3G and you can choose
which SIM slot uses data. The battery is 3000mAh which I thought was pretty
small for a tablet but it lasted the whole day with still some juice left. Of
course if you use 3G then expect battery life to take a hit.

Main camera

Dog selfie using front camera

Kata also pre-installed some software very similar to the
Kata Box like Mega VPN, Netflix, CBS, FOX, Crackle, etc. which adds to the
value and usefulness if you love to watch videos. You can check out my Kata Box review to know more about those apps.

Verdict:

Android tablets maybe a dime a dozen nowadays, but there are
only a few that have a nice design with Dual-SIM phone functionality at this
price. Kata has done a good job with the T4 providing a good tablet experience
without sacrificing too much in terms of specs and performance. Honestly, if
you have a budget of Php6000, and you couldn’t decide between getting a phone
or tablet, the T4 should be on the top of your list. Just make sure you have
big pockets.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

The last time I did a review for a Kata tablet was the FishTab 3, and that was more than two years ago. Last week, I was able to get a review unit of Kata's latest tablet, the T4. It looks very similar to the FishTab 3 and in the same way the very popular mini tablet from Cupertino. I remember knocking Kata for not including 3G in the FishTab 3. This time they did. In fact, you can use it as a Dual-SIM phone. So far, I'm pretty impressed with this mini tablet and assuming Kata can sell it at the right price, they just might have a winner on their hands. Keep an eye on Kata's Facebook page for availability and price. Come back in a few weeks for a full review.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Is your old PC slowing down? Do you feel that your laptop is
a slow as molasses? Maybe it’s time to upgrade that old spinning hard drive to
a newer and faster SSD. If you’re afraid of the upgrade process then perhaps
getting an upgrade kit is the way to go. I decided to upgrade my old 128GB SSD
on my Asus laptop to the SP S60 240GB SSD. Once again, let’s see if I made the
right decision and hopefully I’m able to share some pointers on the whole
process.

Since this is the second time I replaced the hard drive of my
laptop, I had a fairly easy time opening up and replacing it. But before we get
into that, the kit comes with an external case so that you can use your old
disk as an external USB drive. However, if you want to clone your existing hard
drive then you’ll need to install the new SSD in it first, connect it via USB
and fire up the cloning software. The cloning software (NTI Echo 3) is part of
the package but you’ll need to download and activate it. By the way, the
license code for the cloning software is located in the manual, it’s small, hard to read and
the codes are confusing (lots of zeros and letter O).

Everything went well up until I started the cloning process.
I would always get an error at about 8%. I tried so many times that it took
almost the whole day trying to troubleshoot the problem. I contacted Silicon
Power’s tech support but by the time they responded to my inquiry, I had
already downloaded a different free cloning software (Drive Clone Free) which
worked right away. Finally I was able to use my new SSD.

Everything you need is in the box

My error message

Performance and Conclusion

After going through the frustration of the cloning process, I
finally had it installed and working. All my old files were cloned properly.
Boot-up was fast. But since I already had an SSD I didn’t really notice much
difference. Read/Write speeds were slower than advertised but still fast enough
for my needs. There are a lot of comments on Amazon that says Silicon Power
switched to a different chip manufacturer to save cost and that’s the reason
for the slower speeds. But the average person won’t really notice. I’m still
undecided if getting an upgrade is worth it, as I found out the hard way that
there are cloning software that you can get for free. It is very easy to buy an
external USB drive enclosure and I’m sure you have a screwdriver somewhere in
your house.

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Read before you buy! Gadget reviews and Tech News.
I am a self-confessed gadget addict. I need to write about this addiction as my therapy. Currently a commercial pilot and former engineer at IBM. Hope you find the reviews useful.